ATHENS — Tom Crean has made just one official hire for new Georgia basketball staff, and now the salary for that hire, assistant coach Chad Dollar, is also official.
Dollar will earn an annual salary of $270,000, according to information provided by UGA. That’s generally in line with what assistants for former head coach Mark Fox earned.
The length of Dollar’s salary was not released, though basketball assistants have generally been for one year.
Crean agreed to a six-year contract worth $3.2 million annually.
Dollar had been an assistant coach at South Florida, and prior to that worked at Georgia Tech. He has longstanding ties to the Atlanta and Georgia areas on the recruiting trail.
“I think he will be excellent on the court,” Crean said of Dollar earlier this week. “I think he’s got a toughness, I think already he’s not afraid to give me ideas and he’s not afraid to tell me if something could be better. This is a basketball relationship that we hope is going to make us better and make our young people better, recruit people to join in and I feel really strong about that with him.
“What you want more than anything else on the court, what you want anything else in recruiting, you want someone who will go deep into your players, that will not walk away when it gets tough, that will not be afraid be afraid to challenge and push them in the way they’ve got to go. I think he’s got a conviction of spirit, a conviction of what he believes in, and it’s going to mesh with us.”
There are still two more assistant coach spots for Crean to fill, and he has said he won’t rush into making those hires. He also indicated that Matt Bucklin, who has been on staff in an operations role, was likely to remain.
Jonas Hayes was offered what Crean called a “lucrative” salary to remain on staff, but the former Georgia player was hired earlier this week to be the top assistant at Xavier.
